Formally the NEC PC-9801 series, a line of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers made by NEC from 1982 to 2000. Originally NEC's primary business PC, by the 1990s they had become NEC's main PC line for Japanese consumers as well, and had even been cloned by a number of companies, most notably Epson (as the PC-286/386/486/586 line).
The PC-98 computers featured an architecture very similar to the contemporary IBM-compatible PCs, with x86-compatible CPUs but with very different graphics and expansion capabilities. Microsoft ported MS-DOS to the platform from the start, and would also port most versions of Windows as well, all the way up to and including Windows 2000. By that point, the PC-98 series had adopted PCI and had become increasingly indistinguishable from the IBM-compatible PCs, making their discontinuation inevitable.
It was and remains particularly popular for its steady flow of games, such as “doujin” style dating sims and RPGs. In the West, it is perhaps best known as the platform on which the earliest Touhou games were released.
This tag is for depictions of the computer itself. For images in the style of the PC-98's graphics, see the PC-98 (style) tag.
See also
NEC PC-8801 (PC-88), NEC's main consumer PC line through most of the 1980s
PC Engine and PC FX, standalone video game consoles also made by NEC (the latter of which was also available as an expansion card for the PC-98)
Contemporary Japan-only or primarily-Japanese competitors: MSX, Fujitsu FM-7 and FM Towns (also x86-based), Sharp X1 and X68000
